


Snapshot of a Life

by Q2theQ (paperbagsanonymous)



Category: RWBY
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, DISCLAIMER: this is a bad example of parenting, Drug-Induced Sex, F/F, F/M, Gang Rape, Prostitution, don't use this as a parenting guide, if you're using fanfiction to figure out how to parent a child then idk what to tell you
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-29
Updated: 2017-10-03
Packaged: 2018-11-06 04:23:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11028573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperbagsanonymous/pseuds/Q2theQ
Summary: Summer Rose, orphaned and at the end of her rope, makes a deal with a stranger that alters her life. In the aftermath, she stumbles into a trio of connected individuals and takes shelter in their dysfunctional world. Life in the city doesn't get easier with trauma, but one light of hope carries Summer through her road to recovery--the love she has for her baby daughter, Ruby.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Well, here we go.

Sweet little Summer Rose, going down the streets with a skip in her step, silver eyes gleaming under the hood of her clean white cloak. A spring baby jumping into life as it lay before her. Sweet little Summer Rose, clattering through the living room on Velcro shoes as she struggled with finances inside a one-story home deep in the polluted city. Grime on the walls was normal to her, the skittering of bugs a comfort as she tucked into the covers at night. Mom and Dad worked hard to keep them off the streets, but Summer’s resilience and sweet innocence towed them through the toughest of times until little Summer Rose’s father was caught with a vapid sleazy squeeze in a glittery red-strapped dress and a laugh that pierced the air and lounged across it long after the joke was over. Big burly teddybear dad leaves along with his reliability, and as the seven-year-old Summer begins to notice cool air in the absence of alcohol and cigarette smoke, there comes Mom’s scatterbrained coke habit and the constant sound of game shows behind her door at night. Summer steals some of her lien off the table and feels terrible. She uses it to buy a sandwich from the deli down the street.

Sweet little Summer Rose, eyes crinkling with worry while the other girls play at school. Standing on the sidelines with her arms bowed together and her legs pressed tight, like a folded wooden doll that hasn’t been unwrapped. Sweet little Summer Rose, teasing boys with smiles and winks for the sake of something to do. Summer Rose, 11, taking the long way home from school. Shooting dirty looks at the drug dealers on the street. Playing hooky, climbing fences, swimming through trees in her own world of solo parkour. No one to impress; she’s just winding her way alone through the city as a form of distraction, recreation, and desperation. Anything off the street? Oh please, let her travels find anything she can take home, home to where the paint is peeling and her mother fights gravely to keep another job. There’s a policeman on her left; Summer darts into an alley, not knowing why she’s hiding if bending down to pick up coins and peanuts from the sidewalk is not illegal. She has a pet cockroach. She puts it that way to keep it from being depressing.

Summer Rose, 12 years old and eating out of garbage cans. Bartering items from her walks to the gullible kids at school. Summer Rose, 14, actively helping her mother look for work. Sitting on the edge of their ratty couch an hour before sunrise, twisting the lipstick tube that would apply to her mother’s saggy flaked lips. Ignoring the wet twitches of her mother’s eyes, turning the lines on her skin into a cracked landscape that needed foundation to smooth it over for another day. The sun would seep through the blinds as she worked, bringing a color to them both that Summer pushed deep down. Dullness was better, dullness was safer, dulling her silver eyes to the world except in the lands of adventure and intrigue found first in storybooks and then the TV and then in real life, 15-year-old Summer Rose falling for boys on the high school courtyard. Tucked under their wings, Summer feels safe, behind alleys, inside tiny linoleum restaurants, in the arcades and roller rinks and sometimes longer than usual in the car, private sessions with close touches and husky breath and words recited from radio specials into her ear. Everyone knew she flitted from one to another. Sucking up temporary love, filling quick needs that were never really sated or secured. Sweet Summer Rose, displaced and alone at the age of 16 when her mom overdoses and lies dead in her bed. Quiet, fading Summer, her cloak gathering dust at the edges as she bums on classmates’ couches. Clogged under the legal system as an academically average sheltered teenager, thus duly forgotten by city hall. Burying herself in schoolwork and kisses, whirling hurricanes through kitchens with meals that would make the pickiest of kingpins water. 

Summer Rose, salvaged by a part-time job. Building up a reserve, taking her comforts in knowing she has financial backup. Summer Rose, never having been taught to prioritize herself in the presence of others. Summer Rose, drained by the needy: the neighbors, the salon coworker, the boyfriends. Using her up dry and it’s all right, it’s all right, helping is good, Summer insists, silver eyes lifting with the rest of her face as she assures everyone that she is needed until the mantra burrows deep through her head into her soul. Sweet autopilot Summer, forgetting what it means to be happy. Lighting up when she sees a kid, settling for less everywhere else. Through the years Summer goes, until her path as she knows it is halted when her boyfriend of two seasons takes her out to the parking lot behind the movies one night. Summer Rose, knocked up at 20 and nowhere to go after the baby daddy promises child support and drives away from her apartment.

Summer Rose, trapped in 600 square feet on the top floor of the sleaziest rent in the city. Summer Rose, clueless about the law, goes on lacking the resources to get on her feet. Scraping through the first year of her baby’s life by combining her own wages with whatever the daddy sends. Tricked one cracked-out neighbor into giving her money, then was too terrified to ever walk down that hall again. Summer Rose, living in a crackdown apartment unit for herself and her beautiful baby girl. The sounds behind the other walls are mortifying. Summer holds her baby close at night, lying her own knees on the raggedy decorative carpet and singing sweet words to make Ruby sleep. The roaches are no longer funny. The crimes of the other tenants can no longer be denied. Wracked by guilt, shame, and fear, Summer Rose cannot bear to send her daughter to an adoption agency. She knows no one who could give her a good life. Sweet Summer Rose, desperate to make ends meet, cuts off the bottom of one of her shirts and tears a line down the side of her skirt. She lays Ruby in her crib and awkwardly leans forward to men on the streets until one of them stops outside an alley, clothed in a casual business suit and an appraising look in his eye. The hushed guile in his sidelong glance makes Summer uneasy while being impossible to resist. He speaks to her, lips peeling softly back to reveal twin rows of teeth that barely part, and barters 500 lien for what she’s offering. Enough for this month’s rent and more. Sweet Summer Rose at the end of her rope gets into a stranger’s car and muffles her breath as they drive in the rain to the other end of the city. 

*

They go a small, dismal room with little lighting, and have a drink at the wooden table. Summer’s orange juice is bitter and spiky. As they talk, the room starts to blur. Are there two of the man? His smiles are still gentle, still tooth-filled. The dim buzz in Summer’s mind tells her she’s relaxing.

She slumps into the wood, and the man’s chair scrapes back. Summer stumbles as her rises her off her seat and plods her zombielike to somewhere else. His hands are still on her shoulder and breast. A light turns on, and Summer blinks another room into existence. She sees a dresser, a lamp, and a bleary triple mattress on the floor. The man pushes her back and tells her to undress. She stumbles into the room, and tries to say “Hey…” The smell rolls off her tongue as she thinks _alcohol_ …the expensive kind. Just like Daddy.

The man has left the room. He’d pushed her a little harder than expected. Summer wavers on tangled feet, then the light in her head clicks on. The cloak comes off, and she ungracefully leans it onto the dresser. She’s taking her skirt off when the door opens again and three men come in. Are they already naked? Summer stares with her legs pressed together, staring straight ahead with her shirt over her shoulder. The men come in. Are they already…up? Summer’s mind slogs through time to flash a picture of her baby’s baby-daddy in her head. She’s doing this for her baby? 

The trio of men come in, and the broad one hooks his thumb down her skirt. Gone, it’s off. Summer’s not present enough to feel fear. She falls backwards onto the trim one, her eyes squinty, trying to remember the drink’s name. _Is it vodka?_

Someone pushes her head, and she drops to her knees. The bones knock hard on the wooden floor. The pain throbs in a moment later. _Ow_ …She’s supposed to be doing something, what they do in the videos. She does, and it’s clammy and clumsy. She paws at the men’s legs, their waists. She awkwardly closes in around their things. _Their penises_ … One of them shoves her head down while she’s holding someone else. Summer gags, and pushes back hard. She’s starting to drool. It’s pretty quiet, except for her forced hums and drunken laughs. Play it like you like it, play it cool. One of them is giggling crazily, his tail clacking back and forth. They close in.

Sweet Summer Rose, thinking _how did…do the thing._ The smell is awful. It surrounds her, foul and damp. They’re holding themselves, stroking. Summer flicks her eyes as she pushes herself down the broad one’s shaft and realizes a tiny lens is watching her, as the first man crouches beside her with a camera.

_How is…what…._ something shoots down her throat, and she gags, pulling back. _Salt_ …her jaw was slack the whole time. The trio comes closer. A small grunt from the trim one. Summer’s mind slogs for a word— _no_ —but she soup in her brain only lets out a loosened, closed-lipped chuckle. 

Time passes. The broad one’s hand steers off her head, bringing her to the mattress on the floor. Summer pitches slowly onto it and their hands are on her, getting her into position. The camera moves. Summer is bare on the mattress, a tailslip, _whoops_ , her panties are off. Summer ripples at the pointy stinger that poked a hole in the satin. He gets on her first, corded muscles clenching around her sides. His nails are digging into her skin. He giggles maniacally, losing himself in thrusts. The trim one is raking through her hair. He points himself toward her face. She scrunches and it parts her lips and she opens. She’s all clogged up— _hickory dickory dock, half a pound of tuppeny rice_ —and she sees a bulge straining in the cameraman’s slacks.

The crazy one jumps off, sweet relief, but as soon as he’s done spraying her back the large one gets on, she feels crushed under a mountain. She’s barely thinking. Heavy world, molding into mush…Summer starts to panic, but the terror only goes up to her heart and pumps it heavily, slowly. She’s too stunned and too stoned to move. The broad one is breathing into her neck, low ragged pants pushing under her skin.

Summer clamps down the tears. _Pop goes the weasel_ …they both exit her, and she crumples in slow motion on her side. She turns on her back, arms spread. _Stare at the wall…_ Her gaze is on the ceiling, but three sausages block its way. Summer zones out. Camera’s in her face. She can’t bite back the tremor in her throat. She lies there helpless, numbly grateful for the vodka.

Sweet Summer Rose, a dead-end single mother. Sweet little Summer Rose, remembering to smile before the pain drops back in. Why is she doing this? For Ruby. She remembers. A nasty image flashes through her vision. She warbles, pained, and goes away.

Sweet Summer Rose, lying naked and limp on a stained sheet. Gagging on the taste and smell. Sweet Summer Rose, tears filming her silver eyes as the men finish one by one. She wants a cloth to wash her face. Or her chest, even, when it dribbles there.

Sweet Summer Rose, orphaned and alone. Suffering inside a drunken porn vid. Sweet Summer Rose, slipping away. The vaguest beacon in her mind anchoring her to the present: _Ruby…Ruby…_ The third one finishes on her. Is it over? The tiny light in the camera dims. The lens shut off. Summer breathes. It’s damp and terrible. Sweet Summer Rose, left to faze out while the men rest in the room. Slowly they get up, lumber away. Flashes of their bodies remain in her memory to this day.

A curtainy flap, and the cloak is falling on her face. Sweet Summer Rose, stripped of her identity, her freedom of existence. Gone forever to the depths of the Web and the darkness in her mind. It clouds densely around her, luring her away to a tiny safe void in her private world. 

Sweet Summer Rose, lying for an hour in an empty room. Lurching sickly aright and finding the money in her skirt. Taking 15 minutes to sit in a chair, slowly dragging her clothes back on. Cover it, cover it slow. The fabrics crawl on her skin, tucking over her and not letting her go. Comfortingly snug, terrifyingly tight. The edge of her cloak used to clean her face. _Salt._ Nasty, viscous. Three samples. The alcohol dims her, makes her waver. _Get up._ She obeys the voice, stumbles on newly refitted boots. She passes a mirror— _do NOT look_ —and smicksmacks her way through a dusty and narrow hallway into the bright and vulnerable night. No one in sight, though she hears a car driving a block down. It’s an airy kind of drive, the kind only audible from one engine moving on a quiet street. It’s dismal as ever in this city, and Summer stands red-rimmed and alone. Patting the lien in her pocket, trudging away to look for home. Sweet Summer Rose, setting herself up to die in a random alley. Lurching lost up the streets until she’s just wandering, her thoughts somewhere else. Before then, her every step rang with one word from the voice in her head, high and trembling within the clouds. Sweet Summer Rose. Saying the same thing inside her head from the moment she started pinballing off the hallway and up to the moment she began to roam, locked inside an ocean of nowhere. Just one word, one word that brings forward a full sentence.

_Ruby…Ruby…do it for Ruby._

*

Only streetlights lit the way, and the air was too cold on her face. She stumbled down the street toward a woman in red. 

The woman whipped around. “What—” Her glare stopped short, and the edges on her face softened into a dispassionate kind of witness. Summer vaguely knew she must be stumbling, or something. Her arms were slack, wave-a-waving as she parried up the block.

“Don’t touch me,” said the other woman, and Summer could see brilliant red eyes locked up tight inside a cagey unwelcoming body. Summer stopped a foot short, her mouth drooping into a whimper. She leaned along the edge of a concrete stair railing.

“You’re standing right next to garbage, idiot.” A storm of black hair surrounded the woman’s face, carrying wildly down her back in a way that distinctly reminded Summer of faraway places she’d only heard about. “These drunks.” Her fists were balled, but she didn’t move. A breeze of air carried by, rustling an old newspaper down the street. “Hey, you got a name?” she asked, and Summer’s head went lopsided. “No name. Okay, Silver, why are you drunk?” No response. The woman sighed, a long, trenchant sound of exasperation.

“I should just leave you.” She turned away and continued up the block. Summer’s insides jumped. She weaved behind the other woman, and in a moment of weakness, she turned around.

“Go to the steps.” She’d said it after a second too long, the twitch of her lips beneath her leer making it evident she was creeped out. Summer staggered back to the railing and sat down. So did her companion. They were outside the pillars of a city bank.

“So now do you have a name?” No. “Ugh…do you want me to call someone?” Summer rocked on the step, metronomic and clutching her arms as she stared at the street. “It’s just bricks over there, honey,” said the other woman. She too was looking ahead, her arms on her thighs. “Do you want me to call your parents?” Summer shook her head. “Your boyfriend?” Summer shook again, her teeth chattering.

“The police?” Summer imagined clothes barely pushing back wide torsos, the blue and black fabrics pinned with gleaming badges of authority. They’d come too close, brush her against the wall. She retched. Some of the alcohol came up on the street.

“God! Fine, then I’ll call an ambulance, I guess. You smell awful, kid.” Summer wasn’t a kid. They were probably the same age. She shook under the cold night air, her throat lumping and scratchy. She pulled her cloak tight around her.

“Hey. I’m not staying out here all night. Give me something to do.” The red-eyed woman was giving her a sidelong frown. Her face was so honest. Summer’s lip trembled, and she fell onto her shoulder.

The other woman went rigid, and stared into the dark. Summer could feel her stony and sharp against her own endless shaking. “You. Smell. Terrible,” the woman said after a few moments, and pushed her upright with one hand. She sighed. “Why am I doing this…you look trashed, kid, I bet you’re another junkie.” She stood up. “You probably live in a cardboard box. But you can stay with me for _one_ night if you sleep on the couch. And clean yourself up. What were you doing, baking in a dirty sauna?” 

Summer just _heard stay with me_ and the other words rushed past her head. She stood up, too fast, and grabbed the rail for support. “You fall twice, I’m changing my mind,” the woman said. Summer followed her, and bent her ankle on a crack in the sidewalk. She fell two blocks from the bank. “Once!” Summer grabbed every object she could, surging from side to side and trying to focus the wayward streets into becoming one. She reached a corner. “Four blocks from here…” The woman was halfway across the road. Summer stomped on a plastic bag that got in her way, stretching apart the handles that laced around her foot. “Are you popping smack?” The woman looked over her shoulder and saw Summer spread across the sidewalk with a torn bag under her feet. She rolled her eyes. “You look like a crackhead. Keep walking.”

Summer got angry and thundered up the next block. “Will you stop stomping around behind me? It’s creepy.” She staggered to a better pace, trying to end the dizziness in her head. “Okay, three blocks from here,” said the one in the middle of her triple field of vision. “Keep it going. Two and a half blocks.

“Two blocks.

“One block.

“Made it. Damn, kiddo, I didn’t think you had it in you.” It was a 10-story apartment building with a nice garden and balconies. There was a dismal elevator ride with weirdly inauthentic fresh air and then they were at the door. The woman flicked out her keys and looped the chain around her finger. “Our neighbors are kind of loud, but mostly on the weekends,” she said. She opened the door, and Summer got in. She saw some nice furniture, dishes behind the glass of a polished cabinet. Her host locked the door as Summer walked two steps down the carpet to the couch. She fell on it. “Ah ah. What did I say? Clean yourself. Then you can sleep.” Summer moaned, saliva building behind her lips. She pushed herself off the pillows and walked with her hand above her eyes down the hall. She passed a clock with red numbers peeking from the door’s edge of an open room.

“Is it 11 or one?”

“11. Bathroom’s on the left, I’ll get you a towel,” said the host. 

Summer stared at the rising steam for a long time before getting herself in. The bath water slipped around her ankle, sinking it into a translucent other realm. The liquid licked the porcelain as it built around the edges of the tub. The rushing spout was very loud. Summer shut it off before it overflowed. The bath bubbles frothed around her, popping like little crinkles. She scraped herself raw with the sponges and scrubs, trying to get off the dirt, the shame. Trying to put sense to what happened. Trying to give it a name. Her headache felt lighter but lingered as the tub ran cold. Summer pulled the plug and winced at the clogging sucking sound. She stood after the water drained past her thigh, not wanting her privates exposed to the air. She reached for the corner of the sink before getting herself out. One leg, then the other, fresh but not clean. She felt like a monster that washed up from the sea. While the curtain was pulled forward, her host had dropped in a towel and some old clothes. Summer got into them, and heard the washing machine hum somewhere in the dark.

She curled on the couch and tried to sleep. The other woman sat on a chair in the kitchen, arms drooped along her thighs again. The door opened. Someone else walked in, exhausted and annoyed. She looked at Summer. 

Summer could feel the sharpness of her changing gaze. “Who is she.”

The first woman sucked in a sigh and got up. “It was just us on the street.”

“And _us on the street_ is now in our apartment?” A taut grip closed around the newcomer’s purse. “My day was clearly long, Raven. I have six hours to sleep. Why would you let some drugged-out street hound onto our couch?”

“It’s alcohol, actually.” An angry grunt. “She was alone, Winter,” Raven said, looking right at the piercing slate eyes. “I was the only one there. I even told her, she can only stay for a night.”

A clear, authoritative sentence filled the room a second later. “One night?”

“One,” Raven confirmed, and Summer clamped her ears.

A pause. “Fine,” Winter said after another moment of regarding the guest. She moved into the kitchen, heels rapping on marble. “No need for dinner, I’m going straight to bed.” The light in the fridge turned on, then shut off as Winter put something inside it. “Night,” she told Raven, and went into the hall. Raven tapped the back of the chair, then looked at Summer. 

“Night.” She was swallowed into the darkness. Summer breathed in the leather of the couch, her heartbeats slowing in the warmth. She dragged the couch blanket over herself and fell asleep.


	2. Chapter 2

Summer woke to a gargantuan headache that had the pressure of a dozen earthquakes. She screwed her eyes back shut, trying to still the pounding. Her body felt like lead. _Whass’this—the vodka_?

Somewhere not far from her, a metal drumstick crashed along an icy mountain, sending a high-pitched rattle deep into her ears. She groaned. ”Sttttttthooooop.” She rotated her hip, and rolled unglamorously off the couch. “Owwwwwwwwwwwwwww.”

“You’re awake,” came a contralto voice from the mountain. Not Raven. Sucking in a breath that swelled her lungs, Summer opened her eyes to see Winter, the roommate, sitting at the kitchen table and stirring sugar into tea. She was reading the paper. “Raven left you some bacon and eggs in the fridge. Pretty late for that, though—it’s half past three.” 

“Stop yelling,” Summer moaned.

“I’m not yelling,” said Winter. “You would recognize that if you hadn’t spent last night drinking yourself into a stupor.” 

Her stirring quickened, dazzling Summer’s head with the images of breaking glass. It was too much effort to cover her ears. She lay for a little while longer, then slogged to the kitchen for her late breakfast.

“Second shelf, light green lid,” said Winter after Summer had been standing in front of the fridge too long. Summer got it, but the thought of the microwave buzzer was too much to bear. She sat down across Winter and plunged a fork into the Tupperware.

“Great, I get a front row seat,” said Winter.

Summer got a couple bites in, but the third came up dripping with runny egg white. Summer jerked to a halt, the palm of her fist pressing into her thigh. She dropped the fork and her head. She didn’t mind that that he impact jarred her brain.

Thwack. “What is the matter with you?” Winter had hit her with the newspaper. Summer didn’t flinch. “I’ll have you know Raven said to keep you here until she returned from work, but if you vomit on one square inch of this apartment, you’re out.” The only response she got was a long, monosyllabic moan. Summer started crying at the table, sniffles turning into sobs. It was pitiful. She could barely even see beyond the table and ugly, close-up parts of herself. She sobbed louder, closing herself into her arms. The darkness blanketed her like wool, welcoming her limited vision. She raised her shaking hands below her face and watched the teardrops fall down her fingers. She tucked the chair in, the wood drawing loudly across the marble, and curled up.

Winter said it again, less harshly than before. “What is the matter with you?”

Summer had to distract herself. “Why aren’t you at w-work?”

Winter tutted and folded her hands over the newspaper. “I worked double shift yesterday with one quarter-hour break. My boss called to tell me to take the day off.” A wry smile played along her face. “I suppose I had a better night’s sleep than you?” Whether or not that was supposed to be a joke, it chipped away another part of what was left inside Summer. She felt it brace like granite, then crumble into the void. “Well, you’ve got a few hours for yourself before Raven returns,” Winter said matter-of-factly, lifting the newspaper with three fingers and waving it off in Summer’s direction. “So wake up; try to make it across this apartment without needing to retch by the end of the day. Maybe a bit of fresh air on the balcony will help.”

Summer stood with her hands on the rail for a long time, gazing out at the city below. The cars were cockroaches, the people ants. She couldn’t even hear them this far up. Summer kept watching the pollution sustain itself, pouring over the skyline into and around the buildings she normally found so tall. Now they laid out across the city like building blocks. _Architecture_. Lots of people down there. She wondered where the cameraman was. Where THEY were. She shuddered, and closed her grip on the rail. She looked down. Black metal with occasional bars of dark gold. She leaned on it, half-willing it to break. She imagined herself leaning too far over and pitching off, sailing down to the dark web of the city. She replayed herself splatting the sidewalk in three different positions, the last time close enough to the curb to make a car alarm go off. _Then the vultures feed_ …maybe she shouldn’t do it yet. She’d be better off hitting the news in her own cloak, preventing her host from suffering a terrible trip to the Laundromat. Her mind cut to Raven holding out a bloodstained top while Winter watched: “ _These were my best pajamas_!”

Summer stayed there until the neighbors walked out on their balcony holding a pair of cymbals and a tape deck. She turned to go back inside, feeling the wind hit a patch of her scalp that had furrowed out in her sleep. “Better?” Winter asked. Summer shrugged and nodded, somewhere in-between. She managed a half-cup of water and waited. She was starting to be able to read the words on the TV channels.

Raven came back eventually, after Summer had brushed her hair so many times it was starting to pile on the couch. “Didn’t take you for the PBS kinda guy,” Raven deadpanned of the space documentary playing onscreen. Summer turned to look at her with her legs crossed on the couch, the brush angled halfway down her hair. “So. Neither of you bit each other’s heads off?” Raven inquired of Winter.

“’Twas tempting, but we kept it civil,” Winter replied.

“ _Fabulous_. Now, I’m getting dinner, but after that”—Raven turned to Summer and wagged her finger—“you are going home.” 

She went to the fridge. Summer turned off the TV and lay on the couch. She started counting the cracks in the ceiling, estimating how far each one measured out. Idly she shook the remote, pulling the hood of her cloak over her head.

She remembered. “My baby!” she cried, flying back up. “My baby! My baby!”

Raven and Winter watched her in silence from the kitchen. “You have a baby?” Raven said.

Summer scrambled up, bashing her knee on the nearby table. She swung around the living room, her mind whirling through a million panicked thoughts. “My baby! I left her—I left my baby!”

“Calm yourself,” Winter said in an even tone. “Where did you leave her. And how long.”

Summer slowed down enough to think. “2-24 hours. At least. In the apartment!” She hyperventilated. “How could I forget her? How could I leave her?”

“Hey. If the neighbors hear her cry, they’ll probably help her, right?” said Raven. 

“No they won’t! My neighbors are crackheads!”

“Stop. Breathe,” Winter commanded. “You won’t help your baby by melting down.” The seconds passed like weeks as Summer wound down from her anger. “Now. We need to get to the baby so we can take care of her. Where do you live?”

“419 S. 9th Street!” Summer spurted. She patted her skirt and found her key, and the lien. Her stomach twisted; then she snapped out of it and staggered toward the kitchen, her vision blurring. “I have the key. Let’s go. Let’s go!”

They made the drive in Winter’s sleek white Prius, its coat gleaming under the flickering wattage of the occasional streetlight. Summer sat fidgeting in the back, trying to stay calm. “Are we almost there?” she muttered. She leaned to the window, checking. “Are we almost there? Why can’t you go faster?”

“Because that could cause a scene, and it’s not going to help anybody but the wallets of the government if we get in a collision,” said Winter. Raven had brought her dinner with her, and had been tapping the Tupperware with an uncomfortable hesitation. She lifted the salmon and took a bite. Winter glared at her.

At last, the apartment rolled into view. Summer unbuckled as Winter parked, pushing herself out the door onto the sidewalk. She was halfway down the entrance hall by the time Winter and Raven got in. The desk worker gave them a tiny nod, before he did a double-take and his sentence carried down the hall: “Wait, is that a Schnee?”

Summer got in the elevator and slammed the 10 button. Raven jammed her elbow onto the closing door. “We’re behind you, you know!” They waited, the tension in the air stifling. When the elevator dinged, Summer got out once the door parted enough to let her through. She rushed down the dingy, thin-walled hall, Winter’s voice an echo of disgust somewhere behind her: “ _This_ is where you live?”

Summer twisted the key in its lock and opened the door. The sounds of partying and heavy bass faded as she hurried into her baby’s room. “Ruby, Ruby, I’m here, oh, Ruby, I’m sorry.” Ruby was lying still in her crib, her eyes crusty and screwed shut, dried saliva covering her mouth. Her chest pricked at the sound of Summer’s voice, and she limped a pallid head in her direction. Her breathing was very shallow. Summer picked her up, her insides twisting ribbons at the mess that had built in Ruby’s diaper. 

Ruby gave another tiny slow thrash. She croaked, too weak to cry. “Hang on, baby, it’s okay,” Summer said. She went to the bathroom and filled a flat blue pan in the sink. The diaper was too strong to keep working with it in the room. Summer took the trash to the hall to take out later. Winter was holding a bottle of baby formula in the living room. Her face was solemn. She gave the bottle to Summer, and folded her arms slowly behind her back to await Summer’s next move. Summer pushed the bottle gently toward Ruby. Ruby recognized the warmth of the tip and reached for it, her hands opening. Summer’s heart finally stopped beating a million miles an hour, but she was still incredibly ashamed that she’d forgotten. 

Over the next minute, a little bit of color came back to Ruby’s face. Summer burped her when she was done, and that was enough—officially rested enough to act out, Ruby started crying.

There was a harsh bark outside—“God!” and Summer couldn’t help it. She cried too. She pulled her baby to her breast and babbled apologies, unable to stop the shaking of her hands. The memories, the smells of the previous night slashed through the void. Ruby’s cries pierced through them, then crumpled around them and washed them away. Summer was sure she’d remember it forever, but forced herself to feel Ruby’s damp clothes pressed against her, the way her tiny fists beat aimlessly on chest and air. Summer pushed against the wall and willed herself to breathe deep. Her hands stilled, and formed a strong cradle around Ruby. She patted Ruby’s back, let her ride out the pain—“There we go, baby, there we go”—and when the baby was exhausted, she fell asleep. 

Summer placed her gently in the blue pan and washed her with warm water. She dried her off and swaddled her up in their softest towel. She left the bathroom to get clean clothes. Winter and Raven were standing in the kitchen, their gazes right in her direction.

Summer clutched Ruby in her fingernails. “Oh my god.”

Winter opened her mouth, but, jolted by the defensiveness around her, Ruby putted out a pant. Raven clamped her hands over her ears, but the white bundle in Summer’s arms leaned over and returned to sleep. Winter opened her mouth again, though it hadn’t been completely closed in the first place. “What. The fuck. Is this.”

“You don’t get it.”

“This entire apartment is a mess! It fails every standard of acceptable living, and I guess now I know where the pathetic and lagging members of society go off to live.” Summer pressed Ruby closer, but it served as no deterrent. “If this is what you have to offer, you have no business being a parent. You should send your daughter to be placed in an adoptive home.” Summer knew she was right. She just hated the way she said it. She shrank back, her eyes narrowed with snake venom.

“Well? You can’t tell me that this is luxury.” Winter panned a clean black glove in a vague reference to the apartment.

Summer snapped in three different directions at once. “Yeah, because YOU know luxury like the rest of us don’t, Schnee!”

“I _know_ that this isn’t an acceptable abode in which to raise a child, _street hound_.”

The images came back, tearing before Summer’s vision in jagged sideways lighting. The blurry hands, the smells, bodies silhouetted by the light above her…Summer fell over, and slammed a hand on the floor before she crashed to her back. Not again, not again, how was she here? Summer dragged her limbs forward; she moved like a marionette in syrup. The hands were reaching from the cracked tile sky, becoming large and long, and Ruby’s wail ballooned in the middle of it all, growing louder and louder as the fingers descended…

“Hey!”

Summer gasped. Time flashed to normal speed. She wasn’t the room. She was in her apartment, and her hand was on the wall instead of the floor. Ruby lay in her other hand, crying.

She flicked her eyes to Winter and Raven. They could have been frozen in a haunted painting. Raven had even taken a step back, every trace of hardened sarcasm erased. Her disturbance somehow solidified Summer’s sense of reality. Here, not there. Summer fell to her knees and hushed Ruby, her pleads full of tears as she buried her lips under her baby’s head.

A few moments passed. Winter spoke. “You can hear me, right?” Pause. “Summer?” Summer tensed, and nodded assent. “Summer. We have to go. We have to take the baby somewhere.” The words were edgeless, almost mesmerizing, and Summer felt herself relent. “Come on. Get up. Get _up_ , Summer.” Somewhere in the room there came the sound of clopping heels. Summer summoned up her strength and began to stand.

The weight dropped like a ceiling of metallic spikes. “I can’t leave my baby!” Summer said, and curled up with her on the floor.

“You have to. It’s for the baby, Summer. I command you, for your baby’s sake and yours, get up.”

“I can’t!”

Raven stomped on a cockroach that had scuttled out from under the fridge. The sound made Summer jump, and then with trembling eyes she leaned slowly back and looked upon her baby’s heated pink face scrunched up in a wet towel.

She found the right words. “Just a few more minutes.”

Winter sighed, in more part acceptance than exasperation. “Fine. A few more minutes.”

She stood around, supposedly too oriented with cleanliness to sit on anything that wasn’t vacuumed and wiped down every two days. A second clopping down the floor notified Summer that Raven had left the kitchen. The window opened. Summer’s dining room and living room were all in one, squeezed next to a studio-sized kitchen and lending the hallway with a bathroom and a bedroom big enough to fit two closets. The city air circulated in soon enough, and the distant hustle of traffic brought Summer to the here and now. She listened to the cars, listened to her breathing, then held Ruby to her breast and ebbed into a world just of their own.

She pulled back. The grimy apartment walls dimmed the world as it returned. She got up, squeezing Ruby tight, and trudged over to Winter.

Winter’s face could have been all but impassive, if not for the tilt of her chin that gave herself the hint of imperiousness. Not a word was exchanged as Summer drew closer, each new step the heaviest she’d ever made. Eventually, they were inches apart. Winter revealed her hands from behind her back, holding them out to convey her next order.

Summer had to say something. “Have you ever held a baby?”

This time Winter’s shoulders dropped with her sigh. “Yes, Summer. I’m not going to drop her.”

She raised her arms a second time. Summer looked at her clean suede gloves, and then with a deep breath held herself straight. She ran her fingers up the curls of Ruby’s hair one last time. Then she stifled her breath, forced herself to meet Winter’s gaze, and the exchange was made.

There was the tiniest rustle of limbs as the sleeping Ruby was transferred to Winter’s arms. Summer brushed across Winter’s sleeves, feeling the fine fabric rustle at her touch. Winter’s gloves were too thick, the contact too short for Summer to feel her fingers, but they still maneuvered with deft, efficient care around Summer’s arms. She took Ruby, and a strange intimacy passed between her and Summer. Winter stepped back, adjusting her hold on Ruby nestling in her towel. She looked surprised and careful as she laid a light hand on Ruby’s head. Summer could not help the small glow of warmth that rose around her as Winter looked upon her baby, her mouth slightly parted. A couple seconds passed, and Winter came back to attention, tucking a flap of the towel over Ruby’s head as she turned away. “Come on, Raven,” she said as she headed for the door. “We’re filing a complaint to CPS.”

“Wait,” said Summer. She met them just as Winter was about to turn the knob. They turned and Summer stuck her hand in her pocket. The feel of her own hand rubbing along her thigh gave her shivers. She fished out the stack of lien and raised it in Winter’s direction.

“What’s this?” Winter asked.

Summer mumbled. “Lien.” Her hair curtained over her face. “For Ruby.”

“You carry that much lien on you in person? That’s a good way to get robbed,” said Raven.

“You’re not HELPING,” Summer said.

For the second time, her witnesses went silent. Summer kept glaring at the floor, fists turned up. She felt like there was glue in her gums.

“Where did you get the lien, Summer?” Winter asked.

Summer tensed. Then she went slack, and drew her arms slowly over herself.

“Where,” Winter said, but the end of the word dropped off.

There was quiet. The word slipped out of Winter again. “Where,” she said, and Summer raised her head to look at her with a heaviness Summer never knew.

Winter took a step back. “Oh my…” Her glove hovered over her mouth. “You…oh. Ohhhhhhhhhhh.” She turned away. Summer turned her head to Raven, who was still in the dark.

She took a new sweep of Summer’s outfit and figured it out. “You sold yourself!”

Summer ducked her gaze back to the floor. _Idiots_.

Winter was shaking. After a couple breaths in, she went to Raven. “Did you get evidence?” _Look at me, bitch_. “Photos, profiles? Clothing in a Ziploc bag?”

“I washed all her clothing,” said Raven.

“Washed—Raven, now we don’t have anything!”

“How I was supposed to know?”

“You—you didn’t. But you could have been more _observant_ —”

“You guys don’t have to talk about me like I’m not in the room,” said Summer.

They both looked startled when she started talking, as though they really had forgotten her. Raven grunted and laid out a wide shrug. “Okay, from now on when I find a drunk girl after dark, I’ll assume she’s a prostitute. Deal?”

“SHUT UP!” Summer yelled, throwing the nearest object at Raven’s head. She and Winter dodged it long before it reached them, but Summer noted their fear beforehand with satisfaction. The impact left a dent in the doorframe. The object clattered to the floor; Summer saw it was a plastic measuring cup with her name written on it in Sharpie. That must have been how Winter knew her name. Ruby woke up again and shrieked.

Summer clutched her head so hard it hurt. “ _Uggggggggggh_.” She twisted like a jilted music box figurine and teetered off to the edge of the hallway. She started hitting her head on the wall.

“Hey.” Two calloused hands grabbed hard onto her shoulders and neck, and Raven pried her away with no effort at all. “I won’t say it like that anymore. Now stop hitting yourself.”

She held her grip until Summer sighed and went slack. Raven let go, not that Summer responded. Strands of her hair fell out of her hands.

She knew where Raven wanted her to go. She wavered in place with emptiness, and then trudged over to Winter at the doorway. The bags under her eyes felt watery and weak. Raven had marched parallel to her the entire time, though she kept her distance. They got to Winter, and Summer stared dully at Ruby squirming in her towel in a stranger’s arms.

Raven stayed at attention, awaiting further orders. Winter spoke to Summer. “You don’t have anywhere to go, do you?” Summer shook her head. “All right. I won’t accept you or your baby staying here when you and your quarters are in such a state. Raven, it would be good to house them until we come up with a plan for where they can go.”

Raven’s gaze flicked to Ruby with a wince, but she nodded. “We need to pack their necessities,” Winter said, and Raven went off to find such necessities.

Summer couldn’t believe it was this easy. Her mind started looking for ways to make it up. “I can cook,” she said, hunching her shoulders in submission. “Really good. And I can clean, and stay home and take care of my baby while you work. And I’ve got lien in the bank.”

“It’s ‘you cook well’,” said Winter, using one arm to get more formula out of the cupboard. “But yes, any housekeeping you can perform would be appreciated.” A dozen cans of formula clinked onto the kitchen counter. Winter let out another sigh, one that was short and clipped with some indication of self-reflection. “Summer, I apologize for what I called you earlier,” she said, rotating to face Summer in a proper position. “I won’t use it on you anymore.” Summer didn’t say it was okay. She was starting to find a lack of effectiveness in Winter’s constant formality.

“Are you always, like…standing straight and talking like you’re in a stuffy old novel?”

A tiny dimple formed in Winter’s cheek. “Well, I was in the military.”

Raven plodded back into the room, a straw basket bumping along her shin. A pile of clothes overflowed over the brim, sitting atop a sloppily packed bag of tampons. “What else?” she said. Summer strode off and packed everything else. “We have kitchenware at home, leave it,” Raven said, and 15 minutes of rearranging later, Summer and Ruby were all set.

“Do you have a crib?” Winter asked as Summer strapped on her backpack.

“We’d need to bring it?” said Raven.

“Yes, because we obviously don’t have one and we need to keep the baby from rolling into trouble while she sleeps.”

“Think of it as a mini-prison,” said Summer, playing along with the clarity that Raven didn’t know about babies. “It’ll also keep her from running loose in the apartment.” She thought Ruby might learn how to climb out of the crib on her own, and the thought made her smile.

“She’d be crawling loose, really,” said Raven.

"And does the baby have a car seat?" Winter inquired as Raven went to disassemble the crib.

“Her name is Ruby,” said Summer. “And no. I don’t have a car.”

Raven looked up from the floor. “Do you want me to…”

“No shortcuts, Raven,” said Winter, and Raven muttered and sighed.

Winter turned to Summer. "I can get to the shop and back in 20 minutes. You'll pay me back later."

She returned the sleeping Ruby to Summer's arms and exited the apartment. Indeed, around that time frame she was back. "The seat is in the car. Now, it's about time we get home."

They made their way down the peeling paint walls and hastily swept floors. Summer was going to explain to the front desk that she’d drop by to pay rent, but Winter’s glove made its way onto her shoulder and they kept going, Raven holding the dismantled parts of Ruby’s crib over her head.

When they got to the apartment, Summer reassembled the crib and placed Ruby inside. Winter had dismissed Raven to freedom, the first action of which was announced minutes later with an audible _whumpf_ from the bedroom. Winter had overseen the preparation of Ruby’s crib, and then waved at Ruby over her blanket before making just as loud of a _whumpf._ Summer turned out the lights in the living room, and in the absence of anything to do, the receded memories came rushing into her darkness. She pushed her face into the couch pillow, trying to will away nightmares.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I changed part of the first sentence because gosh, using "with" instead of "that had" was really annoying me, I had to fix it. And I guess you can consider this a domestic AU for if Raven didn't go crazy.
> 
> I also changed the ending, because driving without a car seat for the baby was just stupid.

**Author's Note:**

> i bet you all want your bagels back
> 
> Welcome to "Snapshot of a Life", the result of your Q2theQ knowing nothing of a character except for her sweetness and her terrible end. Doesn’t mean the fanfic will have a terrible end. 
> 
> Featuring an unpopular ship and a pair so rare I’m a little surprised it has a name. But only a little, because the fandom is crazy creative with shipping.  
> Before the family portrait, I thought Winter was 30. :V I headcanon that she and Raven are closer in age. I made a few minor **UPDATES** on 5/29 to make the story a smoother read.
> 
> Critique encouraged.


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